iOS 5.1 Gold Master testing said to be complete

A new report from ChronicWire has stated that the gold master version of iOS 5.1, expected to ship with iPad 3 and be announced tomorrow, has passed through ‘vigorous testing’ by Apple’s QA (quality assurance) team. ChronicWire says the team has been working for weeks on the OS and it is expected to be released within a few days, bearing some features that have not yet been leaked publicly. “Gold master” is the final pre-release version of software and is usually the last version to be released to developers for testing. The first public release follows a gold master.

The build number of iOS 5.1 Gold Master is 9B176 according to a very solid source, although three different partners who are testing the Gold Master claim to have slightly (by single digits) higher builds numbers on their copies, I’m assuming that’s because right now it’d make sense for those people to be testing what will soon be released as 5.1.1, so I’ve disregarded the claims.